5 This rare wording and rare way of thinking about God provoke a reader to search for some explanation.
Just the discussed passage from the Carmina moralia says about playing Logos.
Noteworthy, St Gregory mentions “playthings” ( παίγνια) dozens of times in his writings however, almost all the cases compare a human’s life, or the life of the whole humankind, with a play, and particular persons and objects with playthings. This is especially true for commentaries on the Bible among Christian exegetes, and Plato’s dialogues among pagan philosophers, primarily the Neoplatonists. Late Antiquity and Middle Ages can be characterised as the time of particular seriousness when even evident episodes of laughter or playing were interpreted with an emphasised prudence. “Playful God” seems to be a kind of an oxymoron, as long as playing games was considered childish since Plato’s times, 3 and almost the only exception of ritual or sacred games 4 pertained to pagan culture as a rule.
The main perplexity in the discussed passage of St Gregory is the description of God who plays. 1 Lexis and Semantics of “playing” and “plaything”
